4 Turkish firms among top 100 arms companies
STOCKHOLM
With a combined arms revenue of $5.5 billion, four Turkish companies, namely Aselsan, Baykar, Turkish Aerospace Industries and Roketsan, have made it to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) Top 100 list for 2022 — two more than in 2021.
Baykar (ranked 76th) and Roketsan (ranked 100th) entered the Top 100 for the first time.
Baykar’s arms revenue rose by 94 percent, the largest increase among all Top 100 companies, as a result of growing sales of Bayraktar TB-2 UAVs, which have been used extensively by Ukraine during the war, SIPRI said on Dec. 4.
Baykar’s arms revenues stood at $1.42 billion, while its total revenues were $1.5 billion.
Roketsan and Turkish Aerospace Industries, ranked 82nd, also increased their arms revenue significantly in 2022 by 17 percent and 14 percent, respectively, according to SIPRI.
Roketsan’s arms revenues amounted to $790 million.
Arms revenue accounted for 81 percent of Turkish Aerospace Industries’ total revenue of $1.56 billion.
Aselsan ranked 60th on the list, with arms revenues totaling more than $2 billion. The company’s total revenues were $2.13 billion.
The combined revenues of the Turkish companies were 22 percent more than in 2021.
Global sales hampered
Even with the war in Ukraine fueling demand, revenues from sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest companies in the industry totaled $597 billion in 2022, 3.5 percent less than in 2021 in real terms, SIPRI said, adding that production issues kept companies unable to increase production.
According to SIPRI, the decline was in large part due to diminished revenues among major arms makers in the United States, where manufacturers struggled with "supply chain issues and labor shortages" stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Diego Lopes da Silva, a senior researcher at SIPRI, told AFP that in this context, the slowdown in revenue was “unexpected.”
“What the decrease really shows is that there is a time lag between a demand shock like the war in Ukraine and the ability of companies to scale up production and really meet that demand,” Lopes da Silva said.
The United States alone saw a 7.9 percent decrease but still made up for 51 percent of total arms revenue in 2022, with 42 companies among the world's top 100.
Arms revenues of Lockheed Martin, which topped the list, fell 8.9 percent to $59.4 billion. Raytheon, another American company, came second at $39.6 billion, with revenues declining 12 percent.
China, which after the U.S. represented the second largest supplier by country, saw its eight arms companies in the ranking increase their combined revenues by 2.7 percent, reaching $108 billion.